Talk:Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration

Contents

Money

Gamp's law states you can't create money - what about the Philosopher's Stone? It creates gold or transfigures items into gold. Mafalda Hopkirk 13:00, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

I think the Philosopher's Stone, as a unique magic artifact, would lay outside of Gamp's Laws. Besides, with the Stone destroyed, the Law still holds true. - Cavalier One(Wizarding Wireless Network) 13:03, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Is hester gamp related to this person? 24.161.89.93 15:30, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

There are supposed to be five principle exceptions of Gamp's Law. Food, love, and gold seem to be three. What are the others? Gwenog Jones

In the Wikipedia says tat "food, love, life, and information. The fifth and final exception is likely money" I think that "life" refers to the rule that no spell can bring back the dead. Seth Cooper 17:16, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Do we know the numbered order of the principle exceptions? Gwenog Jones 21:56, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I think clothes might be one, seeing as house-elves can't conjure their own clothes and wizards like lupin and the weasleys patch their clothes and wear hand-me-downs. Potion ingredients are a possibility, too. 77.100.255.129 17:34, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

i think the fact that the house elfs do noy conjure up clothes has to do with them seeing clothes as a sign of freedom and for house elfs freedom=well not freedom, they like being slaves so that might be why they don't do that, then you can go to the next level why do poor people not just make clothes that are fansyy show up? well maybe it is hard to use conjureing spells of this kind Faustfan 20:16, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Leprechaun Gold...

Leprechauns are magical creatures, and I presume Leprechaun Gold is created by magic also, so surely it does fall under Gamp's Law? If it is a magical law, and not simply a witch/wizard's law... And due the fact that it is not real gold, except it looks, feels, and generally acts like gold, it is a good example of the 'problems' that could be caused by the transfiguration of currency? And it backs up the idea that 'real' gold cannot be created by magic, only the fake stuff that vanishes after a few hours. I fail to see why it does not apply.
Biopotter 22:10, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Leprechauns i would assume are like house elves, that have different kind of magic......? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 92.238.13.67 (talk • contribs).

Little funny....

I just noticed, Hermione said:"
It’s impossible to make good food out of nothing! You can Summon it if you know where it is, you can transform it, you can increase the quantity if you’ve already got some..." So you can live on just a potato just do some more? And if that is the case why did not Hermione,Ron and Harry do this little trick when they where looking for Horcruxs?

thoughts on that: wonder if increasing the quantity retains the nutritional value of the original. So if you make a giant potato, it isn't any more nutritious than the original. Same could pertain to clothes -- lengthening or changing clothes would weaken the integrity of the fabric -- otherwise there would be no ratty clothing on poor students or Lupin, and there would be no real purpose for clothing shops. 98.232.164.210 19:04, December 5, 2009 (UTC)

Just because someone can conjure clothes (or other trade goods), doesn't mean what they create is going to be any good. Any muggle is capable of painting, but we still have Rembrants and Da Vincis. Lucerin 01:23, January 21, 2010 (UTC)

I agree with everything that has been said. With that, and Gamp's Law taken under consideration, I propose the idea that when a wizard or witch conjures anything out of thin air, they visualise it clearly in their mind and are particular or specific with what they are conjuring, which of course would be very hard & skillful to do. Much like bringing a tangible image of the object they are conjuring into the world, not conjuring the object itself. Conjuration is not known to last forever. Maybe that is because the magic of any witch or wizard is their very own print on space and time in the way they use their magic. Also, that the strength of their magic is not only genetic but a manifestation of their character with which they can manipulate the normal laws of nature.

The 5 exceptions

They seem to be:
-food
-gold (leprachauns' gold doesn't last)
-information
-love
-soul (can't bring the dead back to life, or conjure a totally new person out of thin air like you can with an animal)

Life as an exception

Although birds and flowers are created using making, they remain creations. It doesn't mean they are really alive, as they depend on the spell duration, and most important, it's impossible for the to have a soul or an essence of any kind. When life is implied as one of the five thinks you cannot transfigure, is implied as "you cannot make something really alive" as "you cannot bring someone back to life". Turning a pot into a mouse is possible, but it's unlikely that the mouse has a soul, because pots don't.

But in the sixth film, when Hermione casts the Avis spell and later on the Oppugno spell, the birds she created just explode, unnaturally. This support the idea that they are not real birds, but just magic creations without any soul. (Sorry I cannot check the actual passage in the book). --EXE.eseguibile 16:16, August 2, 2010 (UTC)

And if you can´t create food, you sholdn´t be able to create reaö animals of the reason that you could later eat rhe meat on them.Kraftword 02:00, August 11, 2010 (UTC)

Would "love" be considered elemental? Wouldn't that have to fall under some umbrella category like "neurological function"...? I'm not sure how you would classify this, but something like "the brain" or sensory ability seems more likely, though it's not as catchy sounding or alliterative as "life, love, etc." It appears that even wizards as powerful as Dumbledore can't repair issues with eye sight, seeing as he wore glasses- as well as McGonagall, and some other skilled wizards. And in Death Hallows, Hermione comments on Harry's terrible eyesight. So, since entire beings can be transfigured, and most injuries can be healed (excluding those intentionally inflicted by dark magic), and senses can be heightened with charms, actually permanently changing sensory ability seems to be an exception.
Or that may also have something to do with changing the shape of the more permanent fixtures on your body...so Hermione could fix her teeth, but Merope Gaunt apparently couldn't just make herself less ugly by transfiguring her features.

Also, I agree that clothes, or maybe things that you pay for in general, seem to be an exception, since no one considered soing anything tomake Ron's dress robes less heinous. And for that matter, why would any wizard have tattered clothing? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.81.170.190 (talk • contribs).

Removing speculation

The "possible exceptions" part of this article is at least three times larger than the main body of the article (not counting the rest of the Behind the scenes section). Most of what's contained there seems to be baseless speculation. Would anyone mind me eliminating it, or at least parring it down to things that have been explicitly said to be impossible to create in a canon source? I'd just do it, but since the article's been this way for a while with no form of cleanup tags I figured I would ask first. -- 1337star(Drop me a line!) 17:09, July 14, 2012 (UTC)

Water

Might it be worth mentioning that water doesn't seem to follow the same rule? Aguamenti seems to allow one to prevent dehydration unless I'm missing something... Avigor (talk) 02:22, September 20, 2014 (UTC)

Is water considered a food? I think it's not even considered a food in the muggle world. It is a liuid. So it wouldn´t fall under this law at all. --Rodolphus (talk) 05:55, September 20, 2014 (UTC)

It's specifically about elemental transfiguration

The key word here is 'elemental', so love, time, life and information cannot be rightly counted as elemental. SonaBuvelle (talk) 17:51, November 26, 2014 (UTC)

I personally interpret "elemental" here to mean "fundamental", not "related to earth, wind, fire, or water". Either way, I removed the statement anyway as A) it's beyond this wiki's scope to speculate on what the other four Principal Exceptions may be and B) the "conjuration" of things like time and life would have more to do with charms than Transfiguration Spells anyway. -- 1337star(Drop me a line!) 18:21, November 26, 2014 (UTC)